The true costs of low prices.

Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart By Liza Featherstone Basic Books. 282 pages. $25.00

Betty Dukes began working for Wal-Mart as a cashier ten years ago. She joined the company with hopes of moving up through the ranks. But Dukes, who is also an assistant minister at her Baptist church, never got the chance. She alleges she was demoted for complaining about discrimination. She eventually became the lead plaintiff in the largest civil rights class action lawsuit in American history, Dukes vs. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Filed on behalf of 1.6 million current and past women workers, the case claims widespread sex discrimination at the world's largest retailer. Journalist Liza Featherstone recounts the stories of some of these employees in Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart.

Dee Gunter started out as a cashier in the photo lab. She wanted to head the pet department. "Gunter, whose resume also included a stint as a vet's assistant, was rejected three times for the pet department job because, she was told, she didn't have enough experience," writes Featherstone. "The job went twice to teenage boys."

Gunter says she could not be a manager because she lacked the skills, but her supervisors never gave her the opportunity. "Her requests for training were continually denied," Featherstone writes. Gunter is a conservative Republican and fundamentalist Christian and declares that she is "no women's libber. But this isn't the Stone Ages, and this isn't the times of Scarlett O'Hara," she says.

One of the touted aspects of Wal-Mart company culture is its commitment to hiring from within. Featherstone argues that the sex discrimination lawsuit is the direct result of employees who believe in equal Opportunity. These women felt betrayed when they realized they were denied the prospect of advancement.

Featherstone cites a Wal-Mart spokeswoman who said she did not dispute the plaintiff's individual stories. But she contended that mistakes were made by a "couple knuckleheads." Internal documents paint a different picture.

In the early 1990s, top executives and board members received a series of letters signed by more than 100 managers describing a pattern of discrimination against women in promotion and a pattern of retaliation against women who complained. The letters demanded that the company's leaders take action.

In 1992, female employees at corporate headquarters formed a committee called the Women in Leadership Group. They issued a report in 1996 that said "stereotypes limit opportunities offered to women" at the company.

And at shareholder meetings throughout the 1990s, a group of nuns, working with the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, called attention to allegations of sex and racial discrimination. The Sisters of Charity sought resolutions demanding regular reports on the issue.

Featherstone writes that the company's culture played a pivotal role in the alleged sex discrimination. Melissa Howard, a store manager in Indiana, testified that she had to attend business meetings at Hooters restaurants. She also said she had to go to strip clubs during drives to faraway meetings.

Statistics on Wal-Mart employees are incriminating, too. "The lowest paid workers are cashiers, and 92.5 percent of them are women," writes Featherstone. Male cashiers make, on average, more money than women do. Nearly 70 percent of the company's workforce are women, but only one-third of salaried managers are.

Things do not improve up the corporate ladder. In fact, the higher women rise, the greater the disparity with male counterparts, writes Featherstone. On the store manager level, men earn an average of $105,628 while women make $89,280. Male regional vice presidents make 33 percent more than women in the same positions, she reports.

Kathleen MacDonald works in the candy department of a store in Aiken, South Carolina. When she asked her manager why there were such differences in pay between men and women, she says he told her, "God made Adam first, so women will always be second to men."

In his autobiography, Wal-Mart's founder Sam Walton admitted that women were put at a disadvantage in the company. It was Walton's wife and daughter who pushed him to put a woman on the board. "Even in 1985 the company's top forty-two officers included no women, and the board of directors was similarly female-free," writes Featherstone. In 1986, Hillary Rodham Clinton, then-first lady of Arkansas and a lawyer with a firm that often represented Wal-Mart, joined the board. At that time, only 3 percent of store managers were women.

Featherstone shows that the personnel policies of Wal-Mart were inconsistent at best, creating an ideal place for favoritism and discrimination. Job openings were not posted and often went to men who were groomed for the positions. Policies on promotion varied by store, though this is changing, partly due to the lawsuit.

Wal-Mart is the darling of Wall Street. It was named most admired company by Forbes magazine in 2003. In a flattering profile, Forbes mentions that the Waltons are the richest family in the U.S. "The Walton family is as rich as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined," the article states. "Amid all the talk about how rich Teresa Heinz Kerry is, consider that the Walton family is 117 times wealthier."

In 1992, President George H. W. Bush gave Sam Walton the Presidential Medal of Freedom. "This isn't about Sam's wealth," the elder Bush said. "His vision is about what's fundamentally good and right about this country."

Vice President Dick Cheney agrees. He told Wal-Mart employees at a distribution center in Bentonville in May 2004, "This is one of our nation's greatest companies. The story of Wal-Mart exemplifies some of the very best qualities in our country--hard work, the spirit of enterprise, fair dealing, and integrity."

Wal-Mart faces other legal challenges besides allegations of sex discrimination. Workers in more than thirty states are suing the company for making them work "off" the clock." An internal Wal-Mart audit found extensive potential violations of child labor laws. And lawsuits based on racial discrimination have also been filed by workers, some of whom are plaintiffs in Dukes vs. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

Recently, PBS's award-winning newsmagazine, Frontline, did a program entitled "Is Wal-Mart Good for America?" The program traces Wal-Mart's steps from regional retailer to international giant. In the early 1990s, Wal-Mart's stock prices dropped. The company began importing goods from overseas, especially China. By the late 1990s, Wal-Mart was dependent upon Asian imports.

"At least 85 percent of Wal-Mart products are made overseas, most of those in China, under sweatshop conditions, by workers, mostly women, who lack the right to organize," Featherstone writes. A November 2004 article in China Business Weekly states that more than 70 percent of commodities sold by Wal-Mart are made in China.

Wal-Mart now has forty stores in China. In 2004, the company hosted its board of directors meeting in Shenzhen. Frontline went into the Chinese factories and filmed the workers doing the work that used to be done in factories across the U.S. But the Chinese workers make about fifty cents an hour. Factory workers who made $50,000 a year (including overtime) couldn't compete with Chinese workers.

Featherstone is at her best when she describes the stories of women who work at Wal-Mart. Stephanie Odle was an original member of the class action suit. She requested a skills assessment test, which provides vital data for future promotion, an exam that three male colleagues were taking. Featherstone writes: "When she told her supervisor she wanted to take the test, too, he told her he only had three copies. Odle recalls, 'I was like, What? Make another copy! Isn't that the lamest excuse ever?'"

Featherstone includes lots of statistical evidence about sex discrimination at Wal-Mart, but it gets overwhelming at times. In Featherstone's defense, this type of data is the backbone of the case. But the details about lawyers involved may bore the readers. And her rhetorical flourishes can be a bit over the top. For example, she calls the activities at the annual meetings "Nurembergian rites."

Selling Women Short ends with chapters on efforts to reform the "Bentonville behemoth." Feather-stone finds hope in the growing support for shareholder resolutions that demand equality within the company. She catalogs other creative actions like "shop ins" and boycotts, even though these haven't had much of an effect. One union organizer says, "We can't even get our members not to shop at Wal-Mart."

Featherstone proposes unionization as a way to improve the working conditions of female employees. Department of Labor statistics back her up: Not only do unionized women make more money in general, they earn wages closer to those of fellow male employees.

Featherstone documents the ongoing attempts by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union to organize the company, and notes the shortcomings of the unionization bid. She sees the need to organize Wal-Mart as an urgent task, as grocery stores across the country are mimicking Wal-Mart's low wages and skimpy benefit packages.

Wal-Mart wants to keep its stores union-free, and has been successful in that regard. The National Labor Relations Board has issued sixty complaints against Wal-Mart for the illegal firing of pro-union workers, unlawful surveillance, and intimidation in the last ten years, but the fines have been insignificant. Strong union drives are under way in Jonquiere, Quebec, and Loveland, Texas. The only place where Wal-Mart has agreed to unions is in China, though there they will be state run.

Ultimately, Featherstone argues, dramatic change may not come until consumers start seeing themselves as citizens, too. Americans are supporting Wal-Mart through tax breaks, subsidies, and state-funded health care.

"Public welfare is very clearly part of the retailer's cost-cutting strategy," she writes.

Company spokespeople deny this is the case. But internal documents bearing the company logo inform employees about how to apply to "Social Service Agencies." One woman Featherstone interviewed was a former manager and she "was deeply ashamed that many of the women working under her were forced to collect Food Stamps and other forms of welfare."

State governments are finally looking at how many Wal-Mart employees are participating in government-funded health care programs for low income families.

In Wisconsin, Wal-Mart made front page news because the state provides health insurance for 3,765 people who are Wal-Mart employees or the spouses and children of Wal-Mart employees. The annual taxpayer cost of paying for health care coverage for Wal-Mart employees and their families in Wisconsin is $4.75 million.

In Georgia, 10,000 kids of Wal-Mart employees are in the state's health program, costing almost $10 million a year. According to a study by the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California-Berkeley, California taxpayers subsidized more than $20 million worth of health care costs for Wal-Mart.

Unequal pay is morally wrong. But it's also fiscally irresponsible. Conceivably, more women could participate in the Wal-Mart health insurance program if they received higher wages. Fewer would qualify for Food Stamps. If Wal-Mart lived up to its own rhetoric and paid women fairly, it would positively affect millions of people. Surely the money is there, as profits remain enormous.

Wal-Mart makes a lot of noise about values. "City people don't get Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is for country people," said Vice Chairman Tom Coughlin at the 2003 annual meeting. But some values transcend geography. Wal-Mart should live up to the American values that generations of people have fought for: a day's work for a day's pay, equality, and fair play.

Elizabeth DiNovella is Culture Editor of The Progressive.